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Inside Out is a 2015 American 3D computer-animated adventure comedy-drama Disney/Pixar film. It was released on June 19, 2015. It is Pixar's 15th feature-length animated film. In keeping with Pixar tradition, a short film called Lava accompanied the movie.

Contents

Plot

An 11-year old girl named Riley Andersen moves from Minnesota to San Francisco. She thought everything would be great, but started having doubts after seeing her new house and other aspects of the town. Her emotions, Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, and Fear, try their best to make Riley happy. When it's Riley's first day of school, Joy and Sadness are ejected out of the Headquarters through a series of mishaps. Now it's up to Anger, Disgust, and Fear to make Riley happy until they return, but things quickly go downhill.

Synopsis

A girl named Riley is born in Minnesota and, in her mind, at different points in her life, five living emotions are created: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger. Each emotion has a defined purpose in Riley's life: Joy attempts to keep her happy, Anger keeps her life fair, Disgust keeps her from being poisoned both physically and socially and Fear keeps her safe. Sadness, however, doesn't think she has a purpose in her mind or that of the other emotions and is ignored as a result.

When Riley is eleven, her family moves to San Francisco after her father starts a new business. However, the new house is horrible, the only pizza they serve is California pizza (which is pizza topped with broccoli), and the moving van won't arrive for weeks. The emotions try everything in their power to make the moving process a pleasant experience, only to turn on Sadness when she turns a happy memory orb into a sad one by touching it and accidentally causes a core memory to fall out. Aware that memories cannot be changed back once turned sad, Joy decides to keep Sadness occupied by having her read a stack of mind manuals the entire day.

On Riley's first day of school, Joy orders Sadness to stay in a chalk circle and let the other emotions do their job. But Sadness touches a memory that makes Riley cry in front of her new class which creates a new, sad core memory. Joy desperately tries to dispose of it by using a vacuum tube that leads to the mind world, but a struggle with Sadness leads to the core memories being knocked out from the container. Before Joy can put them back, she and Sadness are carried off with the core memories, leaving Disgust, Fear, and Anger to deal with Riley.

Joy and Sadness venture the various islands and a labyrinth-like place called Long Term Memory, where Riley's past memories are stored. They are soon assisted by Riley's childhood imaginary friend Bing Bong, a scrappily-dressed pink cotton candy-elephant-cat-dolphin creature. Bing Bong was hoping to reconnect with Riley via a Memory of his song-powered wagon "rocket". Although initially, Bing Bong is happy and cheerful, the pair discovers that he is secretly miserable, having been out of a job since Riley was four. He desperately wants to feel loved again, reasoning that, if he has no purpose, he will cease to exist. Although Joy attempts to keep this revelation positive, Sadness comforts a crying Bing Bong (which leaves Joy more confused than ever as to how being sad could help Bing Bong).

Bing Bong discovers that his rocket had already been dumped into "the Memory Dump", a seemingly never-ending pit of darkness beneath headquarters where obsolete memories go to be erased from existence for good. Meanwhile, in Riley's mind, Anger, Disgust, and Fear are doing their best to guide Riley through her new surroundings. Anger accidentally instigates a confrontation with Riley's friend Meg when video chatting her, which causes the island which controls this part of her personality, "Friendship Island" to collapse into the Dump. The emotions realize that tampering with Riley's personality will cause it to further be erased, with potentially disastrous results.

Joy, Sadness, and Bing Bong hatch a plan to ride the Train of Thought back to Headquarters, and begin their trek through various parts of Riley's mind in order to reach the loading dock (areas such as Imagination Land, Dream Productions, and so on). Meanwhile, with Disgust, Anger, and Fear in control, Riley's life begins to crumble. She alienates her former friends from Minnesota, fails to connect with her parents, and struggles in the new school. As Joy and company close in on their destination, Anger, Disgust, and Fear finally reason that, if Riley was only happy in Minnesota, there is no choice but to tell her to return there and prepare to run away from her own family.

At night, Joy and her fellow emotions finally reach the loading dock, although it is now so late that the Train of Thought will not arrive until morning. They give Riley a nightmare by awakening a monstrous clown named Jangles, from her Subconscious and Fear, being on dream duty that night awakens her, jump-starting her Train of Thought. Joy, Sadness, and Bing Bong are nearly at Headquarters when the other bunch of emotions put their plan into action, instructing Riley to steal from her mother's bag and pack it to run away to Minnesota. This action causes Riley's "Honesty Island" to crumble, derailing the Train of Thought. Joy finds a way back to Headquarters through a broken recall tube, but after Sadness almost turns the core memories sad, Joy decides to leave her and Bing Bong behind. She starts up the tube, but as Riley gets on the bus, Family Island begins to crumble, destroying the tube and causing Joy to fall into the Memory dump. Bing Bong tries to get her, but the ground he was standing on crumbles, while Sadness barely escapes the same fate.

It seems that all hope is lost, as in a matter of minutes Joy and Bing Bong will be forgotten and cease to exist. Joy, in despair, starts to gather the core memories and reminisce about happier times, stating "I just wanted Riley to be happy." Looking at one of the memories, she realizes that when Riley was sad, it caused her parents and friends to comfort her, in turn making her happy again. Joy realizes that Sadness's main role in Riley's personality is to tell others when she needs help, and by preventing Riley from feeling sad, she was also preventing her from feeling true happiness. This revelation energizes Joy and Bing Bong, who sees his rocket in the dump. They decide to use it to return to the top but are dismayed when it falls short every time no matter how loudly they sing. Bing Bong figures out that they're too heavy together and starts the rocket one last time, then jumps off as it begins to fly. Joy looks back on Bing Bong in the memory dump as she realized Bing Bong's act of selflessness. Bing Bong cheers on Joy to go save Riley. As he starts to fade away, Bing Bong lastly asks Joy "Take her to the moon for me, okay?"

Joy sorrowfully watches Bing Bong fade away and promises that she will try to fulfill his last wish. Joy grabs the bag full of Riley's core memories and attempts to reconcile with Sadness but discovers that Sadness has run away from her, hopped onto a cloud, and flew away, believing that she only makes everything worse and that Riley is better off without her. Using various tools from Imagination Land, Joy launches herself from the trampoline on Family Island, grabbing Sadness and sending the two flying towards HQ. However, a thick window separates them from the other emotions, and Anger desperately tries to break it using a chair. When this fails, Disgust has an idea. As Anger gets frustrated, Disgust insults his intelligence, making Anger furious and causing his head to go up in flames. Disgust uses him as a blowtorch to melt the window, allowing Joy and Sadness to return.

Although the other emotions beg her to stop Riley from running away and fix the relationship between her and her parents, Joy turns control over to Sadness, which surprises the others. Sadness successfully removes the idea of running away from Riley's mind, which fixes the control panel and makes Riley give up on running away, and she decides to return home to her worried parents. Joy gives Sadness the happy memories and they turn into sad ones. Sadness takes control of the panel and Riley finally reveals her true feelings to her parents as she begins to cry, telling her parents that she hates San Francisco and misses her old life in Minnesota and that she had been pretending to be happy because she was afraid they'd be mad if she stopped being their "happy girl." Riley's parents admit they share her sadness and begin to comfort her. Sadness and Joy press the button together, making Riley cry tears of joy, creating a new core memory — only this one is a mixture of yellow and blue; both Joy and Sadness. It creates a new "Family Island" that is visibly more complete and allows for the various aspects of her personality to return in full.

Several months later, Riley has recovered. She now has new Personality Islands, all created by mixed core memories (Anger notes that he likes how Friendship Island has expanded with a new "friendly argument section", suggesting that that Island is powered by a Joy/Anger core memory). Meanwhile, Sadness is finally treated as an equal among the other four emotions, and Joy solemnly remembers Bing Bong's sacrifice as things begin to return to normal and Riley, now twelve years old, adapts to life in a new city. Finally, the five emotions now have a larger, more complete console with which they can act at the same time and help Riley better. Disgust also notes a large red alarm labeled "Puberty" and questions what it does; however, Joy dismisses it as "not important". Meanwhile, at a hockey game, Riley picks up a water bottle belonging to a boy, and inside his mind we see his own emotions freaking out, with a large klaxon alarm blaring "GIRL!", possibly hinting at what is to come for Riley's own emotion in the coming years.

The credits also show scenes of what the emotions of other characters are like, such as Riley's teacher, the worker in the pizzeria, the cool girl, Jangles the clown, Gary the bus driver, a dog, and a cat.

Production

Pixar first revealed the following information on the then-upcoming film at D23 Expo 2011:

From director Pete Docter comes an inventive new film that explores a world that everyone knows, but no one has seen: inside the human mind.

(via The Pixar Blog)

Release

Inside Out was first announced in August 2011 at the D23 Expo. In December 2012, Bleeding Cool reported the title of the film would be The Inside Out, while ComingSoon.net reported it would be Inside Out the following February. In April 2013, Disney officially announced the title on Twitter as Inside Out during CinemaCon.

Prior to its release, the film underwent a test screening for children, due to concerns from executives that it would be too complex for younger audiences—a fear quelled when the audience reacted positively to the picture. The film premiered on May 18, 2015, at the 68th Cannes Film Festival, in an out-of-competition screening. In the United States, it premiered on June 8, 2015, at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, and received a wide theatrical release starting on June 19, 2015, in 2D, 3D, and select IMAX 3D theaters. It was the first animated movie to be released in Dolby Vision format in Dolby Cinema and the second for Disney following Tomorrowland. On June 18, 2015, Skype added faces of the five "emotions" of the film as emoticons available for use in its IM service for the next three months.

A short animated film, titled Lava, accompanies Inside Out in its theatrical release. The musical love story was directed by James Ford Murphy and produced by Andrea Warren. The story was inspired by the isolated beauty of tropical islands and the explosive allure of ocean volcanoes and takes place over millions of years.

Home media

Inside Out was released on Blu-ray 3D, Blu-ray, and DVD on November 3, 2015, and was released in Digital HD on October 13, 2015. A short film set in the world of Inside Out, titled Riley's First Date?, directed by Josh Cooley, the head of story on the film, is included, along with Pixar's theatrical short Lava.

International Release Dates

France - June 17, 2015

Chile - June 18, 2015

Brazil - June 18, 2015

Peru - June 18, 2015

Mexico - June 19, 2015

United States - June 19, 2015

Spain - July 17, 2015

Japan - July 18, 2015

Hong Kong - July 23, 2015

United Kingdom - July 24, 2015

Taiwan - August 7, 2015

Indonesia - August 19, 2015

Philippines - August 19 2015

Greece - September 3, 2015

Italy - September 16, 2015

China - October 6, 2015

Reception

Box office

Inside Out has grossed $356.4 million in North America and $499.7 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $856,130,132 against a budget of $175 million. It is the seventh highest-grossing film of 2015 (behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Jurassic World, Furious 7, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Minions and Spectre), the second highest-grossing animated film of 2015 (behind Minions), the 64th highest-grossing film of all time and the 15th highest-grossing animated film of all time. Inside Out opened across 3,946 theaters in the United States and Canada, of which 3,100 showed the film in 3D. It grossed $3.7 million from its early Thursday-night showings, a record for a Pixar film, breaking the record previously held by Monsters University ($2.6 million) in 2013, and $34.2 million on its opening day, which is the second-largest opening day for a Pixar film behind only Toy Story 3 ($41.1 million). It earned $90.44 million in its opening weekend finishing at second place at the box office behind the second weekend gross of Jurassic World which earned $106.6 million. Although it was Pixar's first film not to debut at #1, its opening weekend gross was still the biggest for a Pixar original film (breaking The Incredibles' record), the studio's second-biggest of all time (behind Toy Story 3), the highest weekend debut for a film that did not debut at #1 (breaking The Day After Tomorrow's record, even after adjusting for inflation), and the top opening for any original film, live-action or otherwise, not based on sourced material, eclipsing the $77 million debut of Avatar. Reasons for the film's successful opening has been attributed to its Cannes premiere, CinemaCon press screening, its 98% Rotten Tomatoes score, good word-of-mouth, Father's Day weekend and a successful Tuesday night Fathom screening. Also, 91% of all schools were off the weekend it was released. In its second weekend, the film fell gradually by 42.4% to $52.1 million, expanding to 4,132 theaters (2nd all-time behind Brave) and still held the second spot behind Jurassic World. The rest of the week saw it slightly ahead of the latter. In its third weekend, Inside Out reached the #1 spot at the box office when it declined 43.1% and grossed $29.8 million in 4,158 theaters, after originally not going to be #1 over the 4th of July weekend.

Outside North America, the film earned an estimated $40.3 million in its opening weekend from 37 countries, which is 42% of its total international release. It had the biggest opening ever for a Pixar film in South Korea ($5.1 million). Mexico led the highest opening with $8.6 million, followed by Russia and the CIS ($7.6 million), France ($4.9 million), Australia ($3.6 million), Argentina ($3.3 million), South Korea ($3.3 million), Brazil ($3.1 million), and Spain ($3 million). It became the highest-grossing Disney/Pixar animated film of all time in Mexico ($27.7 million), ahead of Frozen, India and Ukraine, and in Russia it is the second highest-grossing Disney/Pixar film and is the first Pixar film to exceed 1 billion rubles.

Critical Response

Inside Out received universal critical acclaim. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a rating of 98%, based on 317 reviews, with a rating average of 8.9/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Inventive, gorgeously animated, and powerfully moving, Inside Out is another outstanding addition to the Pixar library of modern animated classics." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating, the film has a score of 94 out of 100, based on 48 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". In CinemaScore polls, cinema audiences gave Inside Out an average score of "A" on an A+ to F scale. Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, and Richard Kind have received critical acclaim for their voice performances in the film.

Prior to its release, there was concern among the general public that Pixar films were dwindling in quality, with an over-reliance on sequels. Likewise, DreamWorks Animation was beginning to flounder in the early 2010s as several films performed poorly at the box office, leading to speculation that the "genre" of computer animation was "in a funk". Inside Out has been called a return to form by numerous film critics.

Following an advance screening at CinemaCon on April 22, 2015, the film was well received by audiences. Praise was aimed for its smart storyline, although some wondered whether the concept was too complicated for young audiences and to attract family crowds. After premiering at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, the film attracted universal acclaim from film critics. Peter Debruge of Variety was effusive, calling it the studio's "greatest idea" and "a stunningly original concept that [...] promises to forever change the way people think about the way people think." The Chicago Tribunes Michael Phillips called it the studio's best since Up (also directed by Docter), a "consistently inventive and a heartening corrective to recent, stockholder-driven inferiorities." Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter deemed it an "audacious concept" that stands among the most "conceptually trippy films" for family audiences. "With its quite literally cerebral bent, I think Inside Out might have some trouble fully connecting with younger kids, but grown-ups are likely to shed more than a few tears," remarked Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair. The Guardians Peter Bradshaw felt it "buoyant and sweet-natured", though slightly inferior to Pixar's best.

As the film went into wide release, it continued to attract acclaim. A. O. Scott of The New York Times deemed the film "an absolute delight", reserving particular praise for its "defense of sorrow, an argument for the necessity of melancholy dressed in the bright colors of entertainment." The Washington Post's Ann Hornaday considered it "that rare movie that transcends its role as pure entertainment to become something genuinely cathartic, even therapeutic, giving children a symbolic language with which to manage their unruliest emotions." Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times found it "bold, gorgeous, sweet, funny, [and] sometimes heartbreakingly sad," deeming it one of the best films of the year. Entertainment Weekly's Chris Nashawathy extolled it as "transcendent and touching [...] so smart and psychologically clever." Times Mary Pols felt it a "nearly hallucinogenic, entirely beautiful" work that "defies the conventions of family movies." Christopher Orr of The Atlantic urged readers to view the picture, calling it "Pixar once again at the top of its game, telling the kind of thoughtful, moving meta-story it's hard to imagine being produced anywhere else." Wai Chee Dimock in the Los Angeles Review of Books compared the film to the work of neuroscientists Antonio Damasio, Dacher Keltner, and Oliver Sacks.

Possible sequel

Being asked about if there will be a sequel, Pete Docter said that he currently has no plans, but added, "never say never."[8] Later, Pete said, "To hell with the idea, we have another film in mind."

Strangely, the Fog Horn shirts use a red Blustering Bellowpane Monster head (with a Robin's Egg Blue colored helmet) for their sponsor logo.

As revealed in the first official trailer, each person has the same set of emotions, although their appearance is altered to make it look like the person they control/live in.

Also, all the emotions in Riley's mom are all female and resemble her, and the emotions in Riley's dad are all male and resemble him, but Riley has three female emotions and two male emotions who look nothing like her. In this aspect, she is unique, as everyone else's emotions (including those of people the same age of her) are all the same gender and clearly resemble their human "host".

Joy is not the default emotion for everyone, either. In Riley's father, Anger is in control, and Sadness is in control of her mother. The "cool girl" has Fear as the main emotion, and the bus driver's emotions, aside from their colors, all look exactly like Anger.

There are currently two versions of the film's first official trailer, and there's only one major difference: In the UK version of the official trailer, the Dad's emotions were watching soccer, but in the US version, they were watching hockey.

Inside Out is the fifth Pixar film in which any of its songs (in the body of the film) are sung by characters; Joy, Bing Bong, and Riley sing "The Bing Bong Song", the first being Toy Story 2 (in which a Woody puppet sings "You've Got a Friend in Me" on a television, and later, so does Wheezy with Barbie dolls in the background), the second being Monsters, Inc. when, at one time, Mike and Sulley sing part of "Put that Thing Back Where It Came from (Or So Help Me)", the third being Finding Nemo (in which Mr. Ray sings "Let's Name the Species" and while Dory sings "Just Keep Swimming"), and the fourth being Brave (in which Merida and her mother sing "Noble Maiden Fair", and King Fergus and other men sing "Song of Mor'du").

This Pixar film has the most sneak peeks and clips out of all the Pixar films.

According to director Pete Docter, each emotion is based on a shape and what each emotion represents: Joy is a burst of energy/a star, Sadness is a teardrop, Anger is a firebrick, Disgust is a broccoli, and Fear is a raw nerve. Pete Doctor says he loves broccoli too much, however.

The writers considered up to 27 different emotions but settled on five (Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Fear, and Anger) to make it less complicated. Some of the particular emotions that ended up being cut included Surprise, Pride, and Trust. Surprise was removed because Pete Docter thought the emotion was too similar to Fear.

Interestingly enough, according to college level psychology, there are seven universally-identified emotions - the five featured in the film as well as Contempt and Surprise.

In some countries, the movie was released one day early (June 18) before its release date.

This is the first Pixar film not to have any main antagonist, not counting Anger.

A little interesting detail in the movie is that Riley and her Mom's vision from the inside is an oval-shaped screen, while Riley's father is a rectangle-shaped screen.

The Otherworldly Concerto part of "Grim Grinning Ghosts" is heard during Riley's bad dream about her new home.

When the story was being developed, it was originally going to be Joy and Fear who get lost in Riley's mind. According to the developers, they thought it was "like the funniest choice." But it was changed to Sadness because Pete Docter had a bad Train of Thought during a walk outside the studio.

A running gag that occurs in the film is that Anger is shown reading a newspaper with a headline that displays what's happening. Here are the known occurrences:

When young Riley refuses to eat her broccoli and her father says she must eat them if she wants dessert - "NO DESSERT!"

When Riley and her family arrive in San Francisco (and Fear is thanking Joy for her "confirmation" that earthquakes are myths) - "FUTURE IS SHAKY"

When the Forgetters send up the TripleDent Gum jingle to annoy the emotions - "GOLDEN STATE, BLUE MOOD"

When Meg tells Riley that she found a new best friend that joined the hockey team - "REPLACED! NO NEED FOR RILEY"

When Riley quits the hockey team - "RILEY QUITS HOCKEY"

Another running gag is the "TripleDent Gum" jingle playing at rather inappropriate moments.

One notable occurrence is when Anger is referring to the fact that Riley's happy core memories were created in Minnesota and uses the console to call up that memory but is instead met with the commercial. He then yells, "DID I ASK FOR THE GUM COMMERCIAL?!"

Subway cameo.

To promote the film, Pixar has made several commercials for its partners, including Subway, Sky Broadband, or Clorox. Subway has a brief appearance in the movie.

The film is referenced in an issue of the British comic The Beano, where the Numskulls make comments about the film being similar to their comic strip, before deciding to have a go at making huge amounts of money like the film by using different drinks to act out as the emotions. This was after some UK fans noticed that both the film and comic strip have humans being controlled by tiny people inside their bodies.[9][10] When asked about if Inside Out was taken from "The Numskulls", Ronnie del Carmen said that Pixar did not know about the comic strip at all.[11]

In Riley's classroom (No. A113), a map at the back of the room has pins plotted at different places all over the world. They are references to where all the Pixar movies are set.

Inside Out has won a Golden Globe Award.

This film won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in 2016, the second time Pete Docter won the award in this category, the first being Up.

At one point, Disgust is rubbing her face after Anger yelled that they are taking the bus. (It looks like Anger is yelling at Disgust instead of Fear, though it really is Fear.)

Even though advertisements for this film had used some cartoon sound effects, there are actually no cartoon sounds effects being used in this film itself (like most Pixar films), due to it being more realistic.

Cameos

The playground seen in Riley's memory orb is taken from Sunnyside Daycare from Toy Story 3, with the only difference being that the slide is not coiled but straight. The setting is also different from Sunnyside.

In the teaser trailer, Riley and her family are eating from Chinese food boxes of the same type as the one seen in A Bug's Life and several other Pixar films.